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> I can say that almost all rapists are men. Obviously that doesn't mean that all men are rapists, it means that the probability that a given rapist is a man is
by cmdrfred 10y ago
> I can say that almost all rapists are men. Obviously that doesn't mean that all men are rapists, it means that the probability that a given rapist is a man is very high.
You can't determine the probability of an individual like that, at least without more data. I can say that almost all the people who contract HIV are african american or men who have sex with men, that does not mean that the probability of any given homosexual or black person having HIV is high (greater than 50%). The vast majority of men have never raped a woman and will never rape a woman.
- jacoblambda 10y ago...That is literally what he just said.
- SiVal 10y agoAnd this error is ironically an illustration of the exact problem he was commenting on: our brains tend to work by association, and implication (A implies B) tends to be interpreted as association (A implies B means A and B are associated, which means they go together, so A implies B is a way to say B implies A).
- groovy2shoes 10y agoAh, good ol' modus moron, as Angelo Margaris's "First Order Mathematical Logic" calls affirming the consequent.